I really loved seeing these, especially the Magpie, it is so beautiful. If I read correctly, the piece by the photographer was actually a print not just a photograph. Plese enlighten me Teacher.
Wonderful post from you once again. A great selection, showing tremendous variety, and also new to me information even about paintings I thought I knew well, like Monet’s The Magpie. I am reminded of another winter painter, too, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, for example his Sunshine on Snow. I do find it remarkable how much an artist’s eye can bring to what we might otherwise think of as simply white.
I wonder, also, whether the painting “A Mind of Winter” may have taken its title from the Wallace Stevens poem, The Snowman:
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Reading this essay and seeing the images has made my month! As a photographer, I'm attracted to winter landscapes -- especially ice -- because of their move toward abstraction. I knew some of these artists but learned new things, like about Porter's work with color. The barescape also nourishes me as a writer. A book you might enjoy is Katherine May's _Wintering_ -- chapters on various ways to experience the season. Thanks so much for this essay I'll return to for sure! Love the variety of image and thought.
I really loved seeing these, especially the Magpie, it is so beautiful. If I read correctly, the piece by the photographer was actually a print not just a photograph. Plese enlighten me Teacher.
Wonderful post from you once again. A great selection, showing tremendous variety, and also new to me information even about paintings I thought I knew well, like Monet’s The Magpie. I am reminded of another winter painter, too, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, for example his Sunshine on Snow. I do find it remarkable how much an artist’s eye can bring to what we might otherwise think of as simply white.
I wonder, also, whether the painting “A Mind of Winter” may have taken its title from the Wallace Stevens poem, The Snowman:
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Thank you for this tremendous, evocative post.
Reading this essay and seeing the images has made my month! As a photographer, I'm attracted to winter landscapes -- especially ice -- because of their move toward abstraction. I knew some of these artists but learned new things, like about Porter's work with color. The barescape also nourishes me as a writer. A book you might enjoy is Katherine May's _Wintering_ -- chapters on various ways to experience the season. Thanks so much for this essay I'll return to for sure! Love the variety of image and thought.